Reservoir Safety Reforms
- Bringing more engineers into the industry, through a recruitment programme to encourage graduates into reservoir engineering careers. This will reduce the burden of work currently experienced by both supervising and inspecting engineers, and ensure we have enough resource for future demand.
Supporting the career progression of panel engineers. We will align the career path to the new hazard risk classifications and provide additional learning and development opportunities to help engineers succeed.
We are developing a mentoring programme to support panel engineers who wish to progress to the All Reservoirs Panel Engineers (ARPEs). We have surveyed the engineer community to develop data on the potential pipeline of ARPEs and to identify potential candidates to support.
Securing the quality and standards of work carried out by panel engineers. We have been working with the Panel Engineer Committee and have surveyed engineers to help identify inefficient processes and unnecessary tasks. This will enable us to identify tasks that could be reformed or eliminated, consistent with moving to a more proportionate, risk-based approach to reservoir safety.
Changes already implemented
Emergency flood plans
We have worked with reservoir owners on emergency flood plans for all large raised reservoirs. It is now a legal requirement for reservoir owners to produce and maintain on-site emergency flood plans.
Reservoir Flood Maps
We have now revised, updated and published reservoir flood maps for over 2,000 large raised reservoirs. We share this information with emergency responders to ensure accurate information is available for emergency planning. The maps can be found at https://environment.data.gov.uk/reservoir-flood-maps/.
Guidance page on Gov.uk
We have created a dedicated page on gov.uk for reservoir safety guidance documents, making it easier to find what you need.
Future supply of reservoir engineers
We commissioned the Institution of Civil Engineers to review how we safeguard the future supply of reservoir engineers. The recommendations made in the report are being taken forward as part of the reform programme.
New process to review engineers' reports and statements
We have developed a new process to review engineers' reports and statements to create an ongoing national assessment. This will allow us to make a more focussed training strategy and ensure our guidance best serves our reservoir owners, operators and engineers. Please follow the links for the new guidance on engineers reports - both S12 reports and S10 reports along with Guidance for reservoir engineers.
Reporting reservoir incidents
We have produced new forms to Report a reservoir incident along with supporting guidance. We have updated the forms to reflect your feedback.
New guidance for reservoir owners and operators
We have issued new guidance for reservoir owners, operators and others involved in managing reservoir assets on How to manage your large raised reservoir. It is designed to supplement our ‘owner and operator requirements’. We hope you will find this a useful resource.
Reservoir Engineer Reforms
We are working closely with the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), and the Panel Engineers Committee, on actions to increase the capacity and capability of supervising and inspecting engineers across England and Wales. These actions address the recommendations in the Independent Reservoir Safety Review report and the Future Supply of Engineers Report.
The changes will offer a range of benefits to the engineering community, for example:
Reservoir Owner Reforms
New reporting system for recording reservoir incidents - RIKBase
The Reservoir Incident Knowledge Base is now live! This website holds reservoir safety incident case studies reported to the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales as part of the post-incident reporting process. You can filter for case studies relevant to you and download the data. The website has been a collaborative project between the Environment Agency, Natural Resources Wales and the Institution of Civil Engineers.
We have updated the guidance and forms to report incidents at reservoirs. Some incidents are mandatory to report.
We are encouraging owners to report all incidents and near misses at reservoirs.
Our guidance explains what to report and how. We share the causes, impacts and lessons learnt in the Reservoir Incident Knowledge Base to help others learn from these events.
Environment Agency Reforms
Environment Agency new duties
The Reservoir Safety Review recommended that the Environment Agency should have the powers to question and challenge supervising engineers’ annual statements, inspecting engineers’ reports, risk assessments and reservoir management plans.
These new duties will improve the quality and consistency of engineer reports and provide an ongoing national assessment, to help develop guidance and training.